* Ryan explains to the evs how meetings at the forest work
* What WG is this?
* Knockengorrochoch and the forest
* shop
* Monthly grant
* screenprinting
* new till
* external projects

# Knock

Nix proposes:

forest supporting zine stall at forest

Wants £100 from this group and £100 from action group

Wants to take old photocopier, paper, tea etc. from forest

maybe cave computer

and hire a vehicle

Chris: anchor Car & Van hire is the cheapest in town

Concerns: the old photocopier is still good, it might get damaged

Nix wants to know if he still has £100 from this WG. The group says yes.

Ryan says no to tea.

It's a high risk mission.

# Shop

The shop manager changes every month at this meeting. New manager: Olivier

Shop meeting tomorrow 3pm.

# Grants

Flyers - we give a good rate, 20p color a4

dance - yes

musical - no funding fringe. Talk to James asap. We have an open stage all summer downstairs, come anyimte

# Screenprinting

Ryan has been taking money for this out of AF end of year budget. Does screenprinting needs its own budget? Nix proposes we talk about a budget for it at the next fwg. Chris: sp can start making its own money. Startup costs about £100. Spent £33 already on keys and chains etc. Chris is surprised.

James says: we should not be inventing budgets at this meeting.

Money from AF. Nothing to do with this meeting.

# ETF Budgets

Discuss on bb. Until then all things through FWG. Not what Nix did.

# New Till

Is coming. £150.

forest is not getting as much money from shop as we thought due to VAT! Get more info, talk next meeting. Someone needs to look into this. Callum.

I didn't finish these minutes off properly before I got Ryan to post them for me. Here is the better version. This is the working group meeting to come to -- no action points actually assigned to people!

Action Points

* Next Behind The Scenes meeting: We need to decide what to do about the tax situation with the shop. (See below.) No one in particular stood up for this, but can we get our treasurer Callum on it?

* Sean: reply to grant applications, put them in contact with the right people, make sure the dance performance happens at the forest, be more hands on.

* Next Forest Working Group Meeting: decide whether to create a new budget for screenprinting, or keep it coming out of the artist facilities budget. It ought to start paying for itself, after startup costs.

* On the bb, and next Forest Working Group Meeting: what to do about budgets for external task forces such as Nix' forest road trip to Knockengorroch.

Attendance

Lots. A whole bunch of us plus all the EVS and the new EVS.

Agenda

Ryan explains what working group this is and how meetings at the forest work

The Forest at Knockengorroch this year

New shop manager for the next month

Monthly grant

Screenprinting

New till

External Task Forces

Knockengorroch

The forest is supporting a zine stall at Knockonegorroch. Giving away free alternative media and some forest stuff too. Nix has already been granted £100 from this working groups budget and £100 from the Community Action working groups budget for it, and also has permission to take the Forest's old photocopier to Knockengorroch in a van, along with the cave's computer. Partially the money is intended for renting a van.

It's a suicide mission, unlikely the computer or printer will come back alive. The road is bumpy, but Nix has bubble wrap. Sean and Chris bet the photocopier is broken before it gets there. And people are not happy about going to different working groups to collect money from them all. But it will be really cool.

The group says the £100 is still okay. Taking the copier is okay. But Nix cannot take tea from the forest to give away for free. There, we draw the line. Take all our valuable computer equipment and our money, but not our tea!

Chris says Anchor Car & Van hire is the cheapest in town

Concerns: the old photocopier is still good, it might get damaged

Shop

A new shop manager gets chosen every month at this meeting. New manager: Olivier.

Shop meeting tomorrow 3pm.

Forest is not getting as much money from shop sales as we thought because the forest is paying VAT on shop sales! Currently if the shop sells a CD for £10, we give £8 to the artist and forest takes 20%, £2. But then, we believe, the VAT man takes 17.5% of the original £10 from the forest, so the forest actually gets 25p. Oops!

We decided to postpone this till the next meeting also. It would be good if someone could look into this and get more info about the tax situation. Could we get Callum, our treasurer, on this?

Sean says (after the meeting, while he is writing up these minutes): based on our current understanding, legal options are:

* Leave it as it is. Forest is basically getting no money from the shop, maybe that's okay. Kinda sucks to take 20% from artists only to give it all to the tax man.

* Just give 100% of the money to the artists. But then legally they have to pay the 17.5% VAT anyway so it's no different.

* Get the forest more money. Normally a shop would take 33%, the artist would take 66%, 17.5% of the artists 66% would go on VAT, leaving the artist with just under 50%. If a shop sells your CD for £10 and you get £8, that's fucking amazing, with a record label the artists gets about 4p or something, so if the artist just got £5 from us it would hardly be bad? Nix wanted the shop to make a little money back for the forest. Seans says 80% to the artists is ridiculous, we are running a shop, that takes a lot of people power and money for rent etc., 50% to the artists after VAT is still really good for the artists.

Grants

We had 3 applications for the monthly grant.

CloseUp is about some art exhibitions in public spaces in Edinburgh. They want the £100 for printing flyers. Funding flyer printing seems kinda lame, we say no, but will let them know that we offer the cheapest printing/copying in town. 20p per color a4.

The Last Five Years is a fringe theatre show. Basically they want us to help fund their fringe show (hiring venues, etc.) and in return they'll do some free performances at the forest. We are not in the business of funding fringe shows, it sets a bad precedent, so no. I will put them in touch with James about booking the hall asap if they want to perform at the forest during the festival, and also point out that if they want to do free performances here we have an open stage downstairs all the time during the festival they can just come and do it.

Screenprinting

The Artist Facilities working group showed up at the Behind the Scenes working group meeting to ask if they could spend £100 of their £500 budget on screen printing. We say yes, but this has nothing to do with the behind the scenes working group, artist facilities decide how to spend their own budget.

AF: It's your budget, you decide how to spend it at your meeting! This is one of the reasons for having budgets, working group autonomy.

There seems to have been some confusion about whether screenprinting comes under artist facilities or is its own thing. But so far it is coming out of the artist facilities year-end budget.

Does screenprinting needs its own budget outside of the Artist Facilities budget? Nix proposes we talk about a budget for it at the next forest working group meeting. Chris says screenprinting can start making its own money once it's going and will pay for itself, startup costs might be about £100. Ryan says screenprinting has spent £33 already on keys and chains etc. Chris is surprised.

James says: we should not be inventing new budgets at this meeting, that's for the forest working group.

Budgets for External Task Forces

There are some things, such as Nix' suicide mission to Knockengorroch, which do not come under any working group but rather are 'external task forces.' Problem is, the forest working group fucked up when it created the budgets, because it didn't create a budget for this. Hence we have things like Nix rounding up money from different working groups.

Potentially we could create a new budget for external task forces and it could be huge, in the thousands. But who is the external task force working group? Who decides who gets to spend the budget?

We will discuss this problem on the bb. Until a fix is decided for it all external money spending goes through the forest working group. Don't round up money from different working groups.

New Till

Is coming. It costs £150, including till rolls and stuff. Yes we do need a till.

I've had it with you. If I had an image of a laser gun I would absolutely position it right here in my hand...Ha! I have a real laser absolutely positioned in my hand!

Forest is not getting as much money from shop sales as we thought because the forest is paying VAT on shop sales! Currently if the shop sells a CD for £10, we give £8 to the artist and forest takes 20%, £2. But then, we believe, the VAT man takes 17.5% of the original £10 from the forest, so the forest actually gets 25p. Oops!

Sean says (after the meeting, while he is writing up these minutes): based on our current understanding, legal options are:

* Leave it as it is. Forest is basically getting no money from the shop, maybe that's okay. Kinda sucks to take 20% from artists only to give it all to the tax man.

* Just give 100% of the money to the artists. But then legally they have to pay the 17.5% VAT anyway so it's no different.

Non non non!!

This is not right.

The Forest pays a FLAT RATE of 12% of all turnover - ie. money in.
We are on the Flat Rate scheme, which is a scheme where you have less work, don't claim any tax back and a scheme you have to explain every 6 months.

Anyway...

To pay VAT you have to be a registered business. Not an artist who made a book or CD or painting in your bedroom. These people don't pay VAT.

I don't know how the shop has arranged its finances.

The sensible thing would be to see the 20% as Forest income.

The rest has nothing to do with us.

The 20% will end up in our books.
The other 80% will not.
For instance, I hope it will not say in our accounts Money In from the shop and then Money Paid Out from the shop.
Don't do that please.

Let's just count the 20% as Forest income and then pay 12% of that as VAT.

So, the Forest is spending £200 plus a photocopier and a computer for Knockengorroch? I never thought I'd see the day! Are we just accepting that we'll never see the equipment again?

Let's not forget that budgets were created with Forest finances in mind. It was not done perfectly, but when we made those budgets they made sense in terms of money in the bank. We can't just keep creating new budgets. If we want thousands of pounds for some external taskforce, other budgets will need to be reduced.

I am happy to scale down, abandon the photocopier idea, do whatever .. I am just determined to make it work. and b a successful, informative, fun and positive experiment .. that loads of people can participate in and read and write some cool shit.

this is a collaborative community project! with the 'warrior words' people .. with everybody. that's what 'forest projects' are abut, no?

I am confident that crating a nice space where folks can get out of the rain and drink some tea read and write and publish a wee bit is a great thing to do. thats will happen no matter what.

I just wanted to make it "Massive" and "Edgy" and "Crazy" and stuff.. but it can be simple as well.

What about Kate's van? Saving Iceland crew also has a van...maybe it's available?

Can you make it work without the photocopier? It would be a real shame for it to get permanently fucked on the way out there, or because it's out in the damp and mud for the weekend... Could you take some sort of subscription list at the event and then mail out the zines? Might be cheaper than potentially ruining a photocopier.

also i think free tea is a good one by the way! It will cost very little and bring people in and you can say 'free tea provided by the forest' and have the info sheets about the forest everywhere for people to take.

Our big brother's got no heart,

when I get my chance I'm going to punch him in the nose, in the nose, in the nose

Hey Nix, if you want some sort of mobile zine publishing, a laptop and a desktop printer and scanner seems like the way to go, because they are mobile, they are designed more to be moved around easily and not break. They are slower, but how much printing are you expecting to do?

A desktop computer and a standalone printer/copier seems totally wrong to me, those things are designed to be delivered to an office by professional deliverers and then not to be moved from the office. Also they suck a lot of power.

But, the meetings did you give you the authority to take the printer/copier, you don't have to back off just because we've bitched about it on this thread now, if you still want to go for it then do.

I've had it with you. If I had an image of a laser gun I would absolutely position it right here in my hand...Ha! I have a real laser absolutely positioned in my hand!